The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (2 page)

“Which order might you be a member of?” Brother Cotsa inquired, still brusque with an indelicacy born of excitement.

“Perhaps we might wait to interrogate our visitor until after he has rested from his climb,” Brother Leo pointed out, mortified by the lack of decorum on the part of his fellow
Fratricelli
.

“No, no. It’s fine,” the young man said. “You are the
Ordo Fratrum Minorum
, are you not? Followers of Francis of Assisi?” When several of the monks nodded in response, he continued, “I belong to the
Ordo Milites Vindicis Intactae
.”

“See?” Piro said, proud of his command of Latin. “
Ordo
.”

“No, Piro,” Raphael said, laying a hand on his guide’s shoulder. “It’s not the same thing.” He looked apologetically at the monks. “I am sorry for the confusion. Piro has been very helpful, and I fear I may have inadvertently taken advantage of his enthusiasm.”

“
Milites
,” Brother Leo explained to Piro. “It means fighting men—soldiers.” He translated the name. “Knights of the Virgin Defender,” he said, pointing at the blade hanging off Raphael’s hip. “We are not Crusaders. We have no use for a sharp tool such as that.”

Piro scratched his head. “Crusader?” he asked, jerking a thumb at Raphael.

“The Fifth?” Brother Mante blurted out.

“Aye,” Raphael said. “That is the one.”

The last Crusade, the Fifth, had ended a scant few years earlier. Already the word from Rome was that it had been a failure and that another would be called soon. Rome had no appetite for the continued presence of Muslim infidels in the Levant. Raphael’s acknowledgment released a flood of questions from the monks, and even Brother Leo found himself leaning forward to hear the young man’s answers.
The Fifth Crusade! Could he have been in Egypt at the same time as...?

Taken aback by the
Fraticelli
’s enthusiasm, Raphael held up his hands to quell the torrent of voices. “Yes,” he said, ducking his head in mild embarrassment at the mix of confusion and fascination offered by the group of monks. “Yes, I was at Damietta,” he admitted. “I was there when Francis came on his mission to convert the Sultan, Al-Kamil.”

“Pull!”

The crier was a haggard Frisian named Edzard, a bald man with a tangled beard and a voice that reminded Raphael of surf battering against a cliff. He limped, and sitting on a horse pained him, but aboard a ship, he moved with a supple grace. He stalked up and down the line of the massive raft, howling at the men.

“Don’t stop, you miserable sons of tavern wenches,” Edzard shouted at them. “This river hates you. The infidels hate you. God even hates you for being weak. Pull!”

The company—three hundred strong, a mixture of Frisian crusaders, Templars, Hospitallers, and Shield-Brethren—huddled beneath a canopy of waterlogged skins, their only protection from the Greek fire hurled at them from the walls of Damietta. Their vessel, a ponderous construct created by lashing two boats together, moved sluggishly in the violent waters of the turbulent Nile. The sheer size and weight of their floating siege tower was the only reason the river had not already claimed them.

The city of Damietta sprawled to the east of the eastern fork of the Nile. Seizing the city was a critical goal in the conquest of Egypt—it would give the Crusaders a much needed stronghold in Muslim territory—but the assault was complicated by the difficult
terrain that surrounded the city. From the north, east, and south, Damietta was protected by the sprawling salt-water lagoon of Lake Manzala—an impenetrable maze of shallow pools and shifting mud. Attacking from the west was the most prudent route, but any force had to cross the Nile in order to assault the thick walls. In the past six weeks, the river had gone from a turgid impediment to an inchoate elemental fury.

The Crusaders were not without means. They had crossed the Mediterranean to assemble an army on Egyptian sand, and they had a number of boats at their disposal. The captains of the boats were loath to brave the river, though, for not only was the channel treacherous and mercurial, but they also had to weather a storm of stones and fire from the mangonels and trebuchets atop the walls of Damietta.

As a final deterrent to any crossing, the Muslims filled the river with a swarm of their own rafts and boats and barges. This argosy was restrained by a number of heavy chains strung from the walls of the city to the foundation stones of a narrow tower that squatted on a spike of rock jutting from the river. The islet stood close to the western shore, though not close enough to effect a crossing from the western bank. The only way to reach the tower was by boat.

The Crusaders had already lost several ships in an effort to storm the river-based citadel. The boats were too exposed out on the treacherous river as they struggled to maneuver into a position where they could mount an assault. The defenders of the tower had a ready supply of Greek fire, and the catapults atop Damietta’s walls had a seemingly endless supply of heavy rocks.

After battering themselves against the stronghold for two months, the Crusaders had finally devised a new solution—one that was either more catastrophically foolhardy than their previous efforts or a stroke of divine inspiration.

The floating siege tower had been the idea of Oliver of Paderborn—a slender man who was more a scholar than a soldier. He had been quietly observing and recording the previous efforts, and it was his opinion that the crux of the Crusaders’ trouble was the upper level of the tower. When the boats off-loaded their assault force at the base, the defenders simply poured Greek fire and a rain of arrows on the men below. In order to give the men on the ground a chance, the Crusaders had to take the upper floor first. Oliver’s solution was a two-decked raft—a floating siege tower that could be grounded against the islet. The force on the upper deck could lower a makeshift bridge and attack the battlements directly.

“Port oars back!” Edzard screamed, and the men on that side strained with all their collective might to shift the boat. They were floating sideways in the river, a wallowing pig carcass caught in the heavy rush of the Nile. They had to get the boat turned or the bridge on the upper deck would not reach the tower. And in order to do that, they had to hit the tiny spire of rock head-on; otherwise, Oliver’s design would be a deathtrap. Those who weren’t burned outright by the Muslim’s liquid fire would likely drown in the raging river.

The last time Raphael had been in water this tempestuous had been during his order’s initiation trial. The
Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae
, the infamous Shield-Brethren, remembered their Grecian origins. They still held dear the symbol of the shield and the goddess whom they protected with the same. When the young initiates were ready to prove themselves worthy, they were taken down into the stone caves beneath Petraathen, the order’s mountainous fortress. Handed an aspis—the heavy shield of their forebearers—and directed to swim in a swift underground river, they were presented with a choice.

The ones who chose swiftly and without fear became knights of the order.

Many of those who failed to decide drowned. A stern reminder of the swift brutality of the battlefield.

Raphael and two dozen of his fellow Shield-Brethren had been chosen to lead the initial assault on the top of the tower. As soon as their floating barge struck the islet, the pair in front were to cut the ropes holding the bridge upright. The bridge was a series of planks lashed together. Two men, crowded together, could go abreast. They would have very little room to swing their swords. Once the boat grounded against the islet, they would have to rush across the bridge quickly. They had to reach the tower before the defenders could knock the bridge away. Or burn it.

There were gaps in the hide cover on either side of the bridge, and as the barge turned laboriously in the river, Raphael saw the mottled stone of the tower swing by.

The Templar and Hospitaller commanders had argued with Calpurnius, the master of the Shield-Brethren company, as to the membership of the team that would lead the upper-floor assault. Calpurnius had listened calmly to both men’s arguments and then asked one question. “There will be no horses on this boat. How will your knights fight?”

Edzard screamed at the men on the starboard side, threatening to throw them overboard if they didn’t match the pace of the port team.

The man crouching next to Raphael shivered and looked like he was about to vomit. His name was Eptor and he was a year younger than Raphael. A farmer’s son, his family lived less than a day’s travel from Petraathen, the stronghold of the Shield-Brethren. He, Raphael, and a dozen others in this company had all taken their oaths together. The Fifth Crusade was their first fielding as knights of the order.

In addition to the sword and shield carried by each of the Shield-Brethren, Eptor had a flail to which he had added several
extra lengths of chain, as if to mirror the chains that spanned the river. It was a farmer’s weapon, more useful for threshing grain than killing infidels, and Raphael was more nervous about being struck by an errant chain than a Muslim sword. Eptor clung to it, though, like a child hanging onto a protective totem.

The boat swung back to port, and the stone wall of the tower hove into view once more. The barge shuddered as the Nile lifted the heavy boat and hurled it directly at the tower.

Calpurnius had blessed each one of the Shield-Brethren, loudly proclaiming that God would protect each of them from the arrows and stones of the Muslim infidels. As he had clasped each man to his chest, he had whispered a private evocation of the Virgin in their ears.
She will be waiting for you
, he had said.
As she does all of those who take up arms in her name
.

The boat quivered beneath them like a horse about to expire. Overhead, something struck the hide roof, and the water-soaked leather hissed and steamed. A roaring noise like the howl of angry demons made the men flinch, and long black fingers of ash began to smear through the protective cover.

Eptor started to moan, his face slick with sweat.

Raphael shook his head, trying to catch the other man’s gaze. Eptor, caught up in the shame of his terror, refused to look at Raphael.

Raphael grabbed the chain of the other man’s maille and hauled him close. They were going to cross the bridge together. He needed Eptor to not panic. As the hide roof began to smoke and crumble to fiery ash, he put his mouth close to Eptor’s ear and began to shout the Virgin’s Prayer.

The deck lurched beneath them as the boat collided with the rocky spur that supported the chain tower. Wood splintered far beneath them, and the tenor of the river changed as water began rushing into the shattered hull. “Attack!” Edzard screamed.

The ropes holding the bridge were cut. The narrow crossing fell, bouncing as its end collided with the rough ramparts of the tower. The men surged forward, eager to cross the exposed bridge.

There was no more time for prayer.

Take up your arms, my brothers, and fight.

She will be waiting for us.

Raphael’s admission of being in Egypt did little to diminish the lay brothers’ enthusiasm. Welcoming the young man as an honored guest, they practically dragged him to the oratory, where he couldn’t escape their queries. Initially reticent to talk of his experiences in Egypt, Raphael finally relented after some earnest coaxing from Piro and the younger men. At first he spoke hesitantly, clearly having trouble settling on a story, but after a few minutes of haphazard storytelling, he fell into an oft-told tale. He spoke plainly and easily, with a natural oratorical grace that reminded Brother Leo of a young Brother Francis.

Brother Leo had at first assumed Raphael to be nothing more than an itinerant student, a minor son of a wealthy Ghibelline family from Arezzo who had joined one of the military orders. After listening to Raphael speak, Brother Leo was struck by the similarity between who this boy had become and who Brother Francis might have been. Francis, eager to wear the mantle of chivalrous knighthood, had taken up arms along with many other sons of Assisi against Perugia. When the battle had been lost at Collestrada, Francis had been captured and held for ransom—a captivity that was to last a year.
If God had not chosen Francis, would he have become like this man?
Brother Leo wondered.

“This fire you speak of,” Brother Cotsa asked. “Greek fire. What is it?”

“It is an alchemical mystery,” Raphael explained. “It is water that burns. It was the Byzantines, I believe, who mastered it first. They used it against the Persian Empire, and since then their alchemists have been attempting to create their own version.
Naft
, they call it. They put the liquid in a flask and wrap the flask in leather and cloth, which they set alight. The mangonel hurls these flaming flasks with enough force that they shatter upon impact, spreading a large wave of burning liquid.” He held up his hands as if he were cradling a skull. “Something not much larger than this—” He spread his arms, indicating the sparse space of the oratory, “—and...” He faltered, suddenly at a loss for words. Realizing what he was implying with his gesture.

This entire room
, Brother Leo realized,
filled with fire
. “Let us speak no more of these atrocities of war,” he interjected quickly. He fumbled for the wooden cross attached to the loose strands of cord around his neck.

He said this more for the benefit of the others, but it was clear that his words broke through whatever spell had come over the young man in the telling of his tale. “I am sorry,” Raphael stuttered suddenly. “I...That is not why I came here.” His eyes widened as he seemed to realize how small the oratory was, how hemmed in he was by the others.
The frightened face of a trapped animal
.

Brother Leo shoved his way through the crowd and inserted himself between Raphael and the lay brothers. “Enough,” he said. “We have been neglectful in our hospitality. Did our guests not bring victuals? We should investigate as to the possibility of a bottle of wine. And some cheeses perhaps. Those would be a proper cause for celebration, especially in this house of God.” He glared at Cotsa and Mante, the two who had been most vocal in their desire to hear the young knight’s stories.